High-profile art by Picasso, Dali and Modigliani has contributed to sales of more than £280m over two days, with bidders from 19 countries paying top prices.

Impressionist, modern and surrealist art sales at rival London auctioneers Christie's and Sotheby's saw several pre-sale estimates shattered.

The first big sale was of Pablo Picasso's 1932 piece, Femme Assiss Pres D'une Fenetre (Woman Sitting Near A Window), which sold for more than £28.6m.

Helena Newman, from Sotheby's, said they were delighted with the price achieved for a portrait of the artist's 'golden muse'.

"This particular portrait is a striking and notably modern-looking work from one of the artist's most celebrated periods."

In total, Sotheby's Impressionist and modern sales raised £145m.

Picasso's 1932 piece Woman Sitting Near A Window sold for more than £28.6m

A day later, Christie's saw a portrait by Amedeo Modigliani sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for £26.9m.

Modigliani's 1919 portrait of his lover Jeanne Hebuterne was the highlight of Christie's Impressionist and modern auctions, which raised a total of £136m.

Judd Tully, editor-at-large of Art and Auction magazine, said: "The art market seems to confound all other financial indicators.

"There is a lot of money sloshing around, and it's very global."

Apres le dejeuner by 19th-century Impressionist Berthe Morisot sold for £6.9m at Christie's, almost three times its high estimate and a record price for a female artist at auction.

Both auction houses held separate surrealist sales that brought strong prices for artists including Rene Magritte and Joan Miro.

At Sotheby's, The Farmer And His Wife, a Miro canvas from 1936 once owned by filmmaker Billy Wilder, sold for just under £5.9m.

Salvador Dali's 1943 Portrait Of Mrs Harrison Williams - an image of a famous New York socialite who later became Countess Mona Bismarck - sold for just under £2.3m.

Works by Egon Schiele and Claude Monet also commanded high prices at the week's auctions, although some high-profile lots failed to meet their reserve prices.

"There has been a lot of talk about the Impressionist and modern market dying out because of a lack of a material," Tully said. "But when really good property shows up there seems to be a lot of appetite for these works."